“The Cloud” generally refers to the on-demand computational resources that are available to a user via a computing network such as the Internet. Cloud computing increases the capacity and computational abilities for a user while relieving them of the responsibilities and costs associated with the installation and maintenance of the resources. These benefits stem from the fact that the resources comprising “the Cloud” (e.g., hardware, software, and infrastructure) are web-based and not resident on the user's computing device.
A “Telco-Cloud” is similar to the Cloud, only it refers to the resources in a communications network, such as a 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) Evolved Packet Core (EPC) network architecture, and has its own set of unique requirements. For example, a TelcoCloud must have a 99.999% availability rate. With a Telco-Cloud, providers own and maintain the resources in the network. However, other providers that do not own the resources may still offer services that use those resources. Virtual Network Operators (VNOs), for example, can purchase or rent the use of some or all of the resources from the providers that own the resources, and offer their customers services that utilize those resources. This arrangement allows the VNOs to provide their services without having the costs and issues associated with owning the physical network.
There are three main service areas of interest for VNOs. These are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Briefly, SaaS, which is often referred to as “on-demand software,” is a software delivery model. With SaaS, software and its associated data are centrally hosted on one or more network nodes in the Telco-Cloud. Users can access the software using, for example, a browser application. The PaaS is the delivery of the resources associated with a computing platform. Typically, PaaS resources include, but are not limited to, facilities for application design, application development, application testing, security, database integration, storage, and the like. Generally, PaaS-related resources are provisioned as an integrated solution and offered to customers. The final service area is the IaaS. With IaaS, the owning provider “outsources” the network nodes and resources of its communication network. The owning provider maintains the responsibility for running, managing, and maintaining the network nodes and resources, while the customers that use them (e.g., the VNOs) pay the owners on a predetermined basis.
With a special emphasis on the IaaS, it is often difficult for VNOs to create their respective networks using the network resources. For example, consider the network architecture for a 3GPP LTE-EPC communications network. In such networks, Policy and Charging Control (PCC) nodes are required to manage the Quality of Service (QoS) for the entire system. It is often desirable to provide network resources at varying levels of granularity. For example, it might be helpful to provide bandwidth resources at both a link level and a flow level, and allow the VNOs to select the resources that are right for their respective networks. However, the ability to provide this to the VNOs is hampered. Particularly, the PCC entities in the 3GPP LTE-EPC network are not able to communicate with some of the components outside of the network, which makes it difficult to identify available resources to a VNO.